Cosmic Yak
Philosopher
Yeah. I studied the bible since I was five. It's why I am an atheist. Because it's bollocks. In later life I read the quran, and that's utter bollocks. We could go on, but what would be the point of that? All the magic books are bollocks, every single one.
One of the things I found interesting in my reading was the Silmarilion. It shows how a writer can simply invent a fictional deific universe. Out of whole cloth. How is the wholy babble any different?
I was brought up a Catholic. When I was 14, I started to have doubts, so I made the cardinal mistake no Catholic should ever make, which was to read the New Testament. Once I'd finished, spotted the numerous contradictions in it, and also the fact that what was being taught in church was not what Jesus had actually said (assuming for the moment that he actually ever existed), I was done.
I have read the Quran too, twice. It is a horrible book, full of hideous threats against those who disbelieve or disobey their monster of a god, and containing almost no positive moral guidance.
On the other hand, I like the Tao Te Ching and some of the other Taoist texts. They provide advice for living a good life, and don't require belief in angry old men living in the sky.
Interestingly, one of them- possibly the Hua Hu Ching, but I may be misremembering- mentions that the moon does not have its own light, but shines due to reflected light from the sun. That is scientific knowledge, and doesn't need desperate dishonest semantics to prove it.
It also doesn't mean that this knowledge came from divine revelation: study of nature is integral to Taoism, and the understanding that comes from that comes from us, not from a deity.